WASHINGTON, Aug 23 (Reuters) – The Pentagon is engaged on plans to deploy the U.S. army to Chicago as President Donald Trump says he’s cracking down on crime, homelessness and undocumented immigration, the Washington Publish reported on Saturday.
The Protection Division planning, within the works for weeks, includes a number of choices, together with mobilizing a minimum of a number of thousand members of the Nationwide Guard as quickly as September, the Publish reported, citing officers conversant in the matter.
“Chicago is a mess,” Trump, a Republican, advised reporters on Friday, deriding its mayor as he continued his assaults on cities run by Democratic politicians. “And we’ll straighten that one out probably next.”
The Pentagon mentioned in an announcement late on Saturday: “We won’t speculate on further operations. The department is a planning organization and is continuously working with other agency partners on plans to protect federal assets and personnel.”
Requested for remark, the White Home referred to Trump’s assertion on Friday.
JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, which incorporates Chicago, mentioned in an announcement the state had acquired no outreach from the federal authorities on whether or not it wanted help. He mentioned there was no emergency warranting a Nationwide Guard or different army deployment.
“Donald Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis, politicize Americans who serve in uniform and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he is causing working families,” Pritzker mentioned.
A spokesperson for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. On Friday Johnson mentioned the town had grave issues concerning the impression of any illegal deployment of Nationwide Guard troops.
“The problem with the President’s approach is that it is uncoordinated, uncalled for and unsound,” the mayor mentioned, including that over the previous yr, homicides in Chicago have fallen by greater than 30%, robberies by 35% and shootings by virtually 40%.
At Trump’s request final weekend, the Republican governors of three states mentioned they had been sending lots of of Nationwide Guard troops lots of of miles to Washington, D.C.
The president has portrayed the nation’s capital as a metropolis awash in crime, though Justice Division knowledge reveals violent crime hit a 30-year low final yr in Washington, a self-governing federal district underneath the jurisdiction of Congress.
In June, Trump ordered 700 Marines and 4,000 Nationwide Guard troops to Los Angeles, towards the needs of California’s Democratic governor, throughout protests over mass immigration raids by federal officers.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Extra reporting by Idrees Ali; Modifying by William Mallard and Lincoln Feast.)
